


as above, so below

by evil_siren



Category: SKAM (France)
Genre: Abrupt Ending, Confusion, Lots of it, M/M, One Shot, RPF, Romantic Friendship, Sexual Tension, Smut, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:47:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23920306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_siren/pseuds/evil_siren
Summary: Axel and Maxence go to Korea and breathe new life into something they've tried to leave behind.
Relationships: Axel Auriant/Maxence Danet-Fauvel
Comments: 13
Kudos: 59





	as above, so below

**Author's Note:**

> **as above so below** Phrase. What happens on one level of reality also happens on every other level; the microcosm and macrocosm behave alike.
> 
> Warning: unbeta-ed rpf including smut. If you're not into that, my recommendation is simply to not read past this paragraph.  
> All errors are mine.
> 
> I was asked to write this and I'm okay with how it turned out ☺️

**Part 1**

_(text conversation)_

Axel: 

what's the point of this, again?

Maxence:

the money is the point.

Although I don't think I'd go if u didn't.

Axel: 

what flight are u on?

Maxence: 

I can't remember, I'll text you later. 

  
  
  


_January 17_

_Flight AF264, Paris CDG - Seoul ICN_

Axel pushes his seat as far back as it goes and folds his jacket into a poorly stuffed nylon pillow on top of the one provided by the airline. He might not be able to sleep but it probably won't matter, in the end. If this trip is anything like his previous experiences, jet-lag will turn him into a wired trainwreck of overtiredness anyway. He'll just have to steamroll through the weekend, trying to be as zen as possible. And say cheese.

He glances at the people around him, slouching in their seats. They’re quiet, each trying to find an acceptable angle to doze off in, and reminds Axel of wilting flowers. Especially Lula, with her blonde hair draped over her shoulders.

Maxence has already fallen asleep, in the seat right to him. 

As he closes his eyes and wills himself to sleep, Axel is brought back to the last time he saw him. He remembers the party in December, denoting the end of filming. It has been a bit more than a month since then, but it feels like longer. He had been so tired he could barely see straight, having accumulated a total of three days off since the beginning of November. His work schedule had made the fall pass by in what seemed like the wink of an eye. Shooting was over quicker than you can say Help I've Got It Really Bad For My Co-star.

He'd harbored a disarray of mixed emotion about the fact that it was over. The production had infiltrated his life on so many levels. Professionally, materially, emotionally. Physically. Eventually, it made it all the way into his shorts. Or, one early morning in October more than a year ago, Maxence's hands had. It had seemed like a coincidence, how they ended up in Maxence's apartment that night, just the two of them. At the same time, all prior events had slowly but surely set the scene for them. Exposition, rising action and - at long last - the inevitable climax. 

Something a little out of the ordinary had been simmering, ever since the start. They had tried to talk about what was happening; futilely trying to use the logical powers of the mind to deal with it. Whenever it came up, it came with the uncomfortable feeling of private display. Too many had witnessed that enigmatic bond form already, so they dressed it in distanced, intellectual jargon. They had exhausted the subject with declarations about the importance of deep interpersonal relationships; of daring to form _a connection_ , irrespective of to who and in what way. They had been over it more times than Axel could remember, only ever vaguely acknowledging what they referred to exactly. "You're a very special person," Maxence had said. "For some reason, you're like a girl to me. Even though you're so macho." It felt like maybe two contradictory insults in one sentence. "I mean, manly." Axel understood later that it was his nonsensical way of admitting that he was attracted to him. He probably hadn’t been fully aware about what he was confessing, at that point. 

What they said had stopped making sense after a while. A month into shooting, Axel was already tired of how people, including himself, were throwing the word _chemistry_ around. If you've ever had that kind of singular vibe with anyone, you know that chemistry is just an eufemism for being really fucking into each other. 

He noticed when Maxence's rational stance on the matter was failing. He knew before Axel did. Axel had been in a state of fragile uncertainty for a long time; he hadn't really known what he wanted, only sure about that he wanted something. And that he couldn't keep away from him.

_Everything is good. Friendships are born in a million different ways, some more unconventional than others_ , he had told himself so many times that he started to feel like a walking, repetitive friendship-quote generator. And he didn't mind what they had to do with each other for the camera. He had tried to not look any closer at why he _so very much_ didn't mind. His gut instinct told him to _be there_ , closer to him - just anywhere close enough to feel the rough warmth that seemed to radiate from him. After a while, his dick started telling him the same thing. That had been a pretty clear indication that he was in trouble, in retrospect. By the time Axel realized what it was, it was too late; there was no negotiating with that feeling. 

But as the hours went by in Maxence's apartment that October night, they didn't mention any of that. 

They sat on Maxence bed, talked, drank beer and listened to music. Maxence got up to change the song. Then he went to get cigarettes, and later an ashtray. At first, Axel thought he was imagining it, but cross his heart and hope to die, it felt like Maxence somehow ended up closer to him each time he returned to the bed. He wasn’t sure which one of them made that happen, though. But he embraced it, he had already given up on any further chance of backpedaling anyway, and a not insignificant number of beers later, they were close enough to push through that nervous moment before it happened. And then it happened. When Maxence's gaze dropped to Axel's mouth, he just had to tilt his head a little and he was there, right against his lips. It seemed strange, how a mouth is a mouth and kissing is always kissing and at the same time he had never really felt anything like it, feeling like he found out so much just by touching his lips. It was like heaven and earth all at once. 

Axel had woken up stunned with a hangover, and Maxence's sperm dried in the hairs on his right arm. 

"Are you weirded out?" Maxence said from the door to the French balcony, where he was smoking in his underwear, leaning an elbow on the railing.

"I don't know. Are you?" 

"I don't know. Are you?"

Axel snickered and sat up. "I've been weirded outer."

"You're such a wordsmith." Maxence put out the cigarette, returned to the bed and climbed in over him. "A poet." 

Axel spent some time in denial, afterwards. He had gradually become aware of Maxence’s inherent tendency of captivating the people around him, sometimes without him even really intending for it to happen. He also sensed that it was a doubtful advantage; that sword had sharp ends in both directions. But maybe that was what had happened with them, too. A game of seduction, end result: home run, bull’s eye, a very grand slam.

Or, it was just a ripple effect of what they had been trying to embody over the last months. And, well, if he hadn't crossed paths with Maxence and never been obligated to act his romantic interest, it would never have happened. Not now, probably not ever, not with anyone else. Maxence wanted to live his character to the core. For Axel and him to fully get naked and in his bed just for the sake of interpretation seemed a little over the top, though, which made Axel come full circle in those pointless ruminations. _Because why had they gotten naked and in his bed, then_. 

It was pretty stupid, really. He had never fully believed in any of the contrived justifications he came up with. He had been there, and he knew. He knew when the others left the bar early the night it happened; when he entered Maxence's apartment; when he tore at the tangled drawstring on his black pants, ran his fingers over his warm, hard dick, and felt him shiver, that the tide was high and he was going for a swim. It didn't happen for the sake of empirical comparison or science and had very little to do with fictional characters bleeding into their human interpreters. It happened because he wanted to get naked with Maxence, to be flush to his skin and make him come unhinged, to make him sweat and see fireworks, and as far as he could tell, that feeling was mightily reciprocated. 

Max had said that _as long as neither of them freaked out about it_ , it would be okay. Axel had agreed with that, nodding like it was the smartest thing he ever had heard. They totally shouldn't let anything get in the way of their friendship. Comradery before fuckery. An impeccable idea, in theory. But then it of course had become extraordinarily difficult to deal with anyway, even after Axel had texted him one night, drunk and under the pretense of wanting someone to go out with. Maxence hadn't been deceived by that little charade and replied _What are we doing?_ Axel understood, impressively through a state of intoxication that forced him to hold his phone in both hands to be able to read his message, that Maxence wasn't talking about the prospect of going out. And, other than _each other_ , Axel didn't know what they were doing either. He put some distance between them following that, which worked acceptably as long there was just that: physical distance. Preferably longer than any studio, random bar or Cinema Publis allowed. Each time they got drunk and gave in to the mutual inclination to shut the rest of the world out was like entering a time warp back to that night in October. Living through promotion and yet another round of filming had been nothing short of an ordeal from an unresolved hell and an endless playing with fire.

But hey, friendship before anything.

*

Maxence fell asleep shortly after taking off and stays unconscious throughout the flight, with one long leg stretched out in the aisle. _Big puppy_ , Axel catches himself thinking somewhere above China, whereafter he quickly goes back to choosing a movie from the in-flight catalogue. 

  
  


**Part 2**

_January 18_

_The Hotel, Seoul, Korea._

  
  


The hotel has a not insubstantial kitch-factor. Plastic flowers and arched mahogany; all that stuff. Maxence slides a key card along the front desk to Axel, and winks. The booking came in a 2-3-3 constellation. Part of him is still low-key amazed about how it's a given who'll share the double room, without a word uttered about it. Not that he’s complaining. The opposite. He plays along like it never even occurred to him that it’s the case. 

“Last one there gets the folding bed,” Maxence says, shoves him and disappears further into the building.

He catches up with him by the elevators. After a quick wrestle and Maxence blocking the doors like an impossible scarecrow when they open, Axel white flags. "Alright, alright, damn," he grumbles and picks up his suitcase. Maxence takes the corridor in long strides. "You haven't even seen the room yet!" he calls after him.

When they do, they quickly establish that it could be a tad bigger. "It's bigger than my home altogether, though," Maxence says and starts to unload his stuff.

“Fuck, no. I can’t sleep in this,” Axel says after sitting down on the rickety camp bed.

Apparently he can, though, because the last thing he remembers is distantly hearing the shower being turned on while laying down for five minutes, and then it fades to black. He was the only one awake during the flight, and the only one asleep the first night. He wakes up fully dressed with a stiff back around 4, sensing the door close. Then, sleep must have claimed him again because next time he wakes up the first thing that he sees is Maxence, serene face and pouty lips on the pillow in the bed next to his, sleeping in a little ball turned toward him. The sweetish smell of alcohol lays thick and muggy in the air. 

Axel has the instinct to shake Maxence awake and ask why he didn't wake him up but is too groggy with sleep. He turns facing the other direction and sees his shoes neatly placed next to each other on the floor beside his bed, before going back into oblivion.

  
  


_January 19_

_The Hotel, Seoul, Korea._

  
  


"Rise and shine."

When Axel opens his eyes, he's not sure where he is; strange place, familiar voice and a not entirely pleasant taste in his mouth. In a 15 square meter hotel room in Korea with Maxence isn't his go-to response, but he's successively convinced after fragments of yesterday breaks the surface of his awareness, and Maxence speaks again.

"Seriously Axel, wake the fuck up."

He turns and rubs his eyes, seeing Maxence bent over his suitcase. "Morning." 

"Morning," Maxence looks up and smirks. "You snoozed about thirty-five times." He's already dressed and looks newly showered. Axel’s bed creaks and complains when he sits down on it, shoving his feet into his shoes. "That thing is loud. I bet the whole hotel is awake now." 

Axel rubs his head into the pillow, pulling the sheets up, and gives a non-committal grunt. He would give his whole gage back if he could just stay there a little bit longer and hit snooze yet another thirty-five times.

Maxence puts his palm to Axel's temple. "What is it?" Interweaving his fingers, he tugs and ruffles his hair lightly once. "Hm?" They linger a few seconds too long. Humans are supposedly good at that sort of thing, decoding the time frames. One second added to a look or touch, double the implications. Maybe running your fingers through someone's hair, gently trying to wake them up is saturated with implication all together, even before the seconds start ticking. The affectionate gestures are always there. Always natural, sometimes impulsive, physical interplay which often trails off into nothing, quickly followed by awkward indecision. Privacy on display, again, and the feeling of having started something you don't know how to finish. Or actually, the feeling of knowing exactly how you would finish it, given no restraints. The one time they did follow through on that instinct, it escalated tremendously. He has a morning erection and the little scalp massage that Maxence provides him with does nothing to relieve it. Conveniently lying half on his stomach, Axel groans into the pillow and keeps his face there. He'd like for him to fuck off and continue all at once. 

"Not excited about going downstairs?" Maxence says and removes his hand.

"I'd rather drive a rusty railroad nail through my head." He peers up from the pillow. "Can't believe how-... awake you are." 

"Yea, well," Maxence says, bending down to his shoes again, pulling at the laces. "There's more to me than what meets the eye. Inside, I'm slowly dying."

Axel throws his legs over the edge of the bed and sits up with a quick adjustment of his boxer briefs. "You went out last night?"

"Yea. You passed out on me." Maxence gets up. "Was kinda fun. Met a Korean girl who wanted to do body shots."

Axel's eyebrows shoot up. "Did you?"

"Did I what?" Maxence stands up and runs a hand through his hair. 

"Do body shots?" 

"Mais non. Of course not." 

Axel scratches his scalp a little, feeling like he might have been sleeping for a year or so. "Why didn't you wake me up, though?"

"I tried. Impossible. You just cursed at me and turned to the other side,” Maxence says and snickers. "Found you in the exact same position as when I left when I came back." He pops off the cap of a deodorant and sticks into his armpits through the arms of his t-shirt.

Axel shrugs. "Guess I was pretty beat." He looks around the room. It’s tiny, but whatever. He wouldn’t wanna stay there with someone he didn’t know. "You took my shoes off?" he asks when his eyes land on his Nikes. 

"Yes." Maxence looks between Axel and the shoes, with the socks bunched up inside. 

Axel doesn't want to make it awkward and says nothing about how sweet he finds that. "I'm all grimey. Gotta shower,” he mutters, and gets up.

"I didn't wanna say anything," Maxence says and sinks down on his own bed.

As he walks by him, Axel is thoroughly aware of being nearly naked and dodges the sweet, hot self-consciousness from Maxence's eyes on his body by showing a pillow in his face.

*

**Part 3**

By 18.30 Axel's throat is sore, his neck sweaty and he has a budding headache. The day isn't over yet. Postponing tiredness, he downs the rest of the coke which has turned lukewarm and flat.

He puts some serious effort into these events. It’s insufferable otherwise, for everyone involved. Sometimes he thinks conventions are a chill way to deconstruct the distance between people on different sides of a common cause. Other times he feels bad for all its attendees, spending their savings, while he could just show up, go through the motions and then have his agent mail the invoice. So he tries his best to keep it all afloat and hopes that people can get a full refund, should they detect his true, genuinely stupid and trite nature. Maxence calls him a circus monkey but he prefers _natural born entertainer_. He imagines that he's doing it for his supporters but as Maxence so eloquently put it: You're doing it for yourself, dude. 

Maxence is relieved that Axel is there, though. He feels very certain about that. “There’s this whole other togetherness. And Maxence is way less of an outsider when you're around,” Lula has declared, on at least one occasion. Maybe he's just relieved to not be an outsider, and that’s all there is to it, and that’s why he orbits Axel and brushes his sides like a purring cat all day. Or, Axel has forgotten what it's like to spend more than fifteen minutes around him; if so, he's brought up to speed with all due clarity. It's been a full day of sitting next to him. A full day of togetherness.

Axel aims for an outwardly appearance of cool, calm and collected but it's not like he's in control of it all. By the end of the daytime activities, he is warm and weary. His brain is approaching the boiling point trying to deflect the urgent messages from his body, constantly signalling its urge to get closer to Maxence. Intimately close, to go in, inside, under everything that he's wearing, and then keep going until he reaches the deepest of waters. And then drown, in that feeling. As he observes Maxence walking across the stage, a relapse to what rendered Axel shook and amazed near the point of paralysis for a full year, seems fast approaching. Well, shit.

*

In dire need of regrouping, he moves away from the conference hall and into the secluded room behind it. “I'd kill for a cold shower. And a beer,” he says to no one in particular, approaching the table of refreshments. Coline is close enough to hear and he elaborates on his dissatisfaction. “There's only coffee and some soft drink that tastes like soap.” 

She looks at said soft drink and tips her glass back and forth. “Maybe if we spike it with something?”

As Axel snickers at that, it's the best idea he heard so far today, there’s a voice just next to his neck. “Soap isn't for eating. Thought we’d talked about that," it says from behind and slightly above.

Barely registering the lame joke, Axel looks back at Maxence, who has moved away along the table, helping himself to a mug of coffee. Maxence’s lips grazed his skin, or it could have been the vibrations of voice, right into the soft curve where Axel’s neck and shoulder connects, now coiling along his throat, under his t-shirt and down his chest. Maybe Maxence is just being himself but Axel can’t tell the difference anymore. Everything he says and does stirs the same response in him and hauls up memories that he thought he had secured much safer than this, blurring his perception. The relapse is already in progress, awaiting completion. Positively ungrouped, he puts his mug back down and leaves the room. 

*

A few breaths of fresh air, a cold shower and he’ll be as good as new, that's what he told himself, and it doesn’t disappoint. He stands right under the water jets, it splashes everywhere, until the tips of his fingers start turning blue.

Shooting isn't the same as being here, doing this. It's like comparing a high-end job to a playdate. It's normal that all this works like a blast from the past, when there's so much room for the past to come back and blast. It's normal, he thinks and looks down at himself, adjusting the water temperature again. Normal.

As he turns off the shower, he hears something suspiciously like a door opening and closing outside the bathroom, but it's too indistinct for him to be sure.

The Strokes starting to blast is a clearer sign that he's got company. 

"Axel," Maxence hollers. "There's a minibar."

Imagine that. Axel runs the towel through his hair and hangs it over the heating rack. "Yea? Awesome." He pulls on underwear and opens the door to the dry, cool air outside of the bathroom.

Maxence is sitting in lotus position on the floor in front of the cooler with two miniature bottles of something in his hands. "There are tiny lemons too. Everything is so small and cute," he says amusedly.

Axel rounds him and lifts the lid of his suitcase with a foot, shuddering slightly. "For cocktails."

"What is?" Maxence asks after a beat of silence. 

Axel digs up a t-shirt and sweats. "The lemons," he says and pulls the shirt over his head. 

Maxence looks at the fruit with an expression like he was just introduced to the concept for the first time. Then he snaps back, and smirks at Axel. "Ah, oui." He seems to have lost steam in his pursuit of drinkables, and starts scrolling his phone, leaning back against the foot of the bed.

Axel squats in front of the cooler, inspecting its contents."What do you want, then?"

The idea of the two of them willfully staying right there, instead of joining the nightly activities, creeps into Axel's mind. Maybe if they keep the lights turned low and stay really quiet, they could remain undetected when the coordinator comes looking for them, although it feels like a weird proposal to make. Then again, Maxence hasn't been one to turn down unconventional ideas in the past, as far as Axel knows. 

"I'll have whatever you're having," he says. Then snickers at something on his phone and holds it up to Axel. "What the fuck is this?"

Axel screws off the cap of a medium sized bottle. The label is in Korean with a big cherry-print in the middle. "That's you and your wife," he says after a quick look at the photo on Maxence's display, featuring him and an unknown female from the photo session they were part of earlier. 

"Funny… I mean my face." 

Axel grimaces as he swallows, it tastes nothing but artificial cherries and alcohol, no false promises there. Then he hands the bottle to Maxence and takes a closer look at the photo. "You always look like that."

Maxence snatches the phone from him and scrutinizes it skeptically. "Like this?" he says before dropping it to the floor. "Thought you found me beautiful." 

Axel takes another long swig. “I find you shamelessly digging for compliments," he says, which Maxence chuckles and shrugs at. 

He brings so many associations to Axel’s mind. A forest nymph, or every scruffy but kindhearted villain in the history of European filmmaking, and then something else too, that Axel secretly feels is something that only he can see. "I think you… have a unique appearance."

"A unique appearance," Maxence repeats, twirling the bottle in his hands. "Next you'll tell me I have a great personality."

"No, I won't. Ouch!" Axel shields himself from Maxence’s foot when he tries to kick him in the calf, tentatively leaving his hand on his ankle. 

"Deeply uncool of you." 

“Why do you need my validation?” Axels asks and leans back against the cooler again. There are so many kinds of ways one can be fucked in, getting heart palpitations from putting your hand on someone’s ankle is a particularly consuming kind. “You earn money on your looks. People... pay for your beauty.” he cringes after that last part, but too late. 

“You think that's how it works? You're not that oblivious." Maxence feels around in his pockets for his bag of tobacco, remembers that he tossed it on the bed and reaches for it, before sinking down on the floor in front of Axel. “Building a career off of your exterior doesn't do shit for self-esteem, trust me.”

Maxence starts crafting a cigarette. His feet come all the way to the side where Axel sits when he stretches his legs.

Axel shrugs and keeps nursing the cherry rum. "I've built everything on my incredible depth. So I don't know anything about that."

He expects some form of return-fire but Maxence just licks along the paper and looks at him under his brow. "That's good. You didn't miss out on anything worth knowing."

Axel observes him quietly for a moment. "Not feeling sorry for you, Elite-mannequin."

Maxence laughs and leans back against the bed, looking every bit of the Elite-mannequin that Axel chides him with. "I've missed you. I haven’t seen you,” he says then. He’s always had that way of dropping serious interjections out of nowhere, in way less serious contexts, catching you off guard. 

"You saw me during filming."

Maxence finishes the bottle in one long drink. "That was work. It's not the same." 

"Between shooting and the play, I’ve barely seen anyone. I haven’t done anything but like, eating and sleeping."

"You gotta live a little, too. You know?" Maxence says, fingering the ring in his left ear. “Listen to your heart's desire."

Axel is about to say that's what he's doing by pursuing this career, but senses that Maxence is getting into something else, entirely. Especially when he spreads his legs, one to each side, shooting out and enclosing Axel. He averts his eyes with a short, quiet laughter. "And do what?"

"Whatever you want." Max smokes and falls silent for a while. "What do you want to do? Right now."

Axels body zings in response so instinctively; he doesn't have to think about the answer to that. Fucking hell, it's a slippery slope. Bros before being hoes, and more importantly, bros before him ending up spending another year questioning his sexual preferences. Although he isn't sure what about it that needs further questioning or if it even matters. He buys himself a moment to recover by opening the cooler again. What they already ingested is starting to affect him, but he wouldn't mind doubling the dose.

"Is that working for you?" he says, and takes out two beers. "Following every impulse, just doing what- or whoever inspires you at the moment?" 

Maxence shrugs. "There's nothing wrong with meeting your own need of inspiration. Better that than hesitating until your brain shrivels up and dies. Or your dick."

"My dick? There's no issue, there." Except for maybe an unyielding semi-erection since the last forty-eight hours, there is absolutely no issue. 

"Don't think so much. It drains the fun."

Axel looks incredulously at him. Sometimes, Maxence seems to be under the conviction of being way more skillful behavioral analyst than he actually is. Not that Axel hadn't been thinking about what he is alluding to, but what does he know? Nothing. "Me?" he scoffs. "Just because I think at all, doesn't mean it's too much." He opens the bottles and gives one to Maxence.

"Yes it does."

"Maybe you should give it a go, though. Try something new," Axel suggests.

"Okay, Aristotle. I will," Maxence says and smirks. 

The beer is perfectly chilled and pale golden yellow. "So, you haven't seen me because I was too busy overthinking, is that what you're saying?"

"Maybe." He lets out a thick swirl of smoke through his mouth, veiling his eyes, but Axel can still feel them burning. 

"And what, do you mean, was it that I was so hung up on? That I couldn't see you?" 

"I don't know," Maxence says and runs his fingertips along the arch of Axel's foot. "But it must have been something very consuming."

He's not into foot fetishism, at all, but feels Maxence's fingers from the sole of his foot all the way up to his crotch. Without him fully noticing when it happened, they've set something in motion. "Maybe. Or maybe, I just didn't want you." Axel leans forward slightly, to pin him in place until he answers. "Did that ever cross your mind?"

Maxence's eyes widen and he appears to be at a loss of words for a moment.

"I know it's a lot to process," Axel offers.

"Axel. I know that you're a mannerless little monster, but, lying is wrong," Maxence says with a deadpan stare. "You know that, right," he adds. 

Axel only manages to produce a self-conscious, timid little laugh, flustered by how Maxence affects him. His futile attempts to clap back at him fails before they even begin and he retreats, blushing, into his quiet metaphorical corner, which is all very unlike him. Maxence's words and probing gaze gives him a hard-on the size of an industrial chimney, and it's fucking _embarrassing_. Axel is suddenly aware that the next move is on him, when Maxence's eyes flutter over his face, in a way that's so obvious to him. He wonders fleetingly if that's how obvious he is himself, as he moves closer without thinking. 

He feels Maxence's firm fingers slide around the nape of his neck, just as the knuckles of someone else's hits the door. Thrice. Maxence twitches and looks frazzled for a moment, before letting out a short exhale and quiet, nervous giggle.

"Fuck," Axel says, not knowing who or what he's cursing; finding himself this close to the fire again, or being pulled out of the warmth so abruptly. But neither of them says or does anything. He watches Maxence breathe. 

"Who do you think it is?" he whispers after a beat. 

"I don't know," Axel shrugs.

"Shh," Maxence hushes. He snorts a laughter when Axel starts moving towards the door on all fours. "You don't have to crawl, just be quiet."

"Shh, tais-toi." 

Maxence pads up to the door and looks out, and Axel comes up after him. He's just in time to see the backsides of two unidentified males moving away in the corridor through the peep-hole, one could be Paul's, but he doesn't recognize the other one. 

"I think they're looking for us," he says.

"I think so too, Aristotle," Maxence says quietly. He moves behind him, from one side to the other, blowing gently in his ear. The interruption is forgotten as soon as the sound of steps fades. 

Axel turns and leans against the door, watching Maxence as he backs away some, but lingers close enough that he could reach him with his hand. "Do you wanna go?" he asks.

Axel fixates on him until his face comes out of the dusky backlight from the big windows in the main room behind him. Maxence never minded his lengthy stares. He pushes off the door and decreases the distance between them, shaking his head. "No. Do you?"

"No." 

The hair sticking out along Maxence's forehead and temples looks almost as black as his snapback in this light, Axel notices. He steps further into the room. "Good," he says.

For a moment he feels like he's also very close to spontaneous combustion, sensing how close he is to getting what he wants, what he _needs_. If he'd be forced to stay in this moment forever, the moment before the ball drops, he'd lose his mind. Maxence puts an end to the stalling when Axel draws closer, coming for his face, first with his hands and then with his mouth. Axel ignites like a flashover, all parts simultaneously as he parts his lips to him, grabbing around his neck. 

Maxence turns them around and backs Axel into the wall, with a little more force than expected, punching a low grunt out of him. 

He floats away and revels in a multisensory time-lapse, as Maxence's tongue slides against his. Hotly, over and over again; he tastes him again, tasting salt water, hearing the crackling of a fire, watching a night sky full of falling stars while at the same time sitting on one of them, and a complete and utter detachment to any other reality than the one centered around, and inside, his mouth. 

"Fuck that," Maxence hisses across Axel's lips, when there's another hard knock on the door.

There's no saving them now. Axel has never been more aware and at the same time at the mercy of his instincts, as he wraps his arms around Maxence and digs his fingertips into his back, with the compulsive desire to pull him closer and grind against his body. It becomes absolutely clear that they're both in this, together and irreversibly deep, when he feels his hard dick pressing right into his groin. “Yea,” he breathes, only transiently aware that there’s yet another knock on the door because, truly, fuck that.

Maxence slides his hands down his body, grabbing at his sides and Axel has a brief moment of near-short circuit when he gives a steady, gentle press forward of his hips into him. Once and then again, a little harder. _Fuck, this is how good it is_ ; he wants to cheer and complain at the same time, and Maxence just comes at him, all open, needing everything.

This won't do. Axel comes up for air and pushes Maxence off with a grip around his upper arms. "Come on," he says and he chuckles at the stupefaction in his face.

Max stares at him as he steers him backwards, smirking when he understands where he's taking him. Coming into the bedroom, Axel pushes him directly onto the bed that he slept in last night, and gets on top of him, because that’s where he’d normally prefer to be. On top, between, inside. It appears to be a shared preference though, because Maxence flips them around and sinks down on him, hitting him in the forehead with the brim of his snapback in the process. 

“Careful. I’m delicate.”

“Right,” Maxence snickers and turns it backwards. 

He can't pin it on being drunk, they haven't worked themselves deep enough into the minibar for that; the fuel that rockets him through the first level of satisfaction, racing for the next, is something else. Maxence is right there with him in that chase, breathing deeply into his mouth, slowly starting to roll his hips into him, with a knee pushed up against the inside of his thigh and a hand shoved in under his t-shirt. Axel didn’t come from grinding against someone since a messy, improvised session with his girlfriend when he was sixteen and innocent (well), and he hasn't planned on having it happening again anytime soon. That plan seems full of holes, suddenly. 

"Maxence," he says, voice low and throaty. 

Maxence keeps his lips loosely pressed over his, and lifts himself up. “Yea?” he mumbles. Waiting for approval, or maybe just aiming to rile him up even more, he taps his fingers slowly down along Axel’s stomach. “What?” Grinning, he traces the contour of Axel’s dick through his sweatpants. 

Axel twitches involuntarily and gasps, unprepared but very ready. He tries to push his fingers down the back of Maxence’s jeans but they are too tight for him to reach and grab like he wants to, and he fumbles for the zipper. He loses momentum as Maxence shoves past the waistband of his sweats and wraps his hand around his dick, too distracted to keep undressing him. 

"Fuck,” he pants, but it comes out more like _hhfug_ and a weak grunt.

Maxence looks sly and galvanized as he starts moving his hand on him. Axel feels his eyes searching his face, but he is entranced. The sight of those fingers around his dick whips him much closer to finishing than he'd like to be, so quickly that it almost hurts but he indulges, brainless sounds coming out of his mouth. It's a little bit rough and rushed, but Maxence can stroke his dick in any way he wants to. 

"Wait a sec," Axel mutters and goes for the zipper again. They spend a few seconds forehead to forehead, raptly looking down at themselves, as he opens Maxence’s jeans. 

His dick is thick and warm; it falls out like a hot bar of iron in Axel's hand when he shoves the underwear down at the front.

Maxence's breathing turns heavy and he puts his lips to Axel’s again, clumsily caressing the side of his face before shoving his hand in behind his head, cradling it with his long fingers. 

There’s a natural, but unmatched, perk of having someone with a dick of their own doing this to you, and that is that it’s going to be a killer handjob. That 10.000-hours-of-practice doctrine builds on some pretty solid grounds. _Or maybe it's just him_ , Axel thinks, hazily looking up at Maxence. His hand is so tight and perfect that it makes Axel dip into _if this is his hand, how tight and perfect are his other places_. He can’t stop watching and keeps tilting his neck until Maxence gets tired of searching for his mouth, and angles him back up with a hand on his jaw, capturing his lips with his own.

Impulsively, Axel pulls him closer by clamping a leg around his thigh and closes his hand around them both, twitching from the silky, slippery feeling of Maxence's dick against his own. 

Maxence resigns immediately. "God," he says, panting hot air across Axel's face. He closes his eyes, lips softly parted, and a wrinkle appears between his eyebrows. "Shit, Axel. You're ruining me."

Axel shoots him a slanting grin, knowing what it's like to feel put together and torn apart by someone, all at once. It’s all going to be over soon, Axel senses a fast-approaching climax resembling a missile launch, already hearing the countdown in his head. Aware that he might be cutting the duration of whole thing even shorter by doing what he's doing, he tightens the grip of his hand, whipped stupid by his own pleasure and the look on Maxence's face above him.

The past year just ran by, and everything had been going so well, but the fact that he denied himself of this makes him want to ask Maxence to hold on for a second, while he gets up and slams his head into the wall a few times. Suddenly feeling incredibly lucky, Axel grasps desperately at his hair. Like he could get away, too far for anything like this to happen, even now. 

Maxence shoves his right hand in under the small of Axel's back, wriggling and pushing and after a few impatient attempts he manages to get past the hem of his pants, in under the fabric of his underwear, and grabs his butt roughly. That's when he starts to come undone. “You feel so good," he says, eyes closed, pressing his forehead against Axel's temple. He grips his left butt-cheek harder; Axel feels the hint of his fingernails. “Too good."

"So do you," Axel gasps stutteringly, as Maxence starts to thrust harder into his hand, whimpery little moans ripped hot against Axel's skin. He fists his t-shirt in his hand and pushes down on his back, trying to keep him steady above him.

Axel tries so hard to hold back but when tears himself off of his lips, risking a glance down at them and sees how Maxence's dick drips precome in his hand, he careers helplessly toward the point of no return. He screws his eyes shut against that stamina-shattering sight, curses rolling out over his tongue.

"I'm right there," Maxence breathes and if Axel couldn't tell from the strained sound of his voice, then the way he moves against him would give it all away; like he’s trying to fuck more than just his hand, with such force that a stressed spring in the bed starts to squawk. It does, at one point, get difficult to jerk them off in some coordinated manner, but Axel just locks his leg harder around his and pushes through. Face in his skin and voice in his ear, Maxence whimpers, “Oh fuck, _fuck_ ,” and then Axel can’t take anymore. 

For a moment everything is nothing but a messy synthesis of them both. Axel arches up towards him, lost in white noise and pleasure, tearing at his t-shirt. When he feels Maxence shudder and come, hard and warm in his hand, he keels over like a domino tile and orgasms, groaning and convulsing helplessly. 

Maxence clasps his hand over his, following its movement until Axel whines from it, wringing every last drop out of him. 

*

With warmth in his hand, on his t-shirt, and a suspicious drop of warmth having escaped all the way up on his throat, he untangles and throws an arm around Maxence's shoulders. He sinks down on Axel's body, by degrees becoming heavier and heavier, jumping a little when Axel eventually makes a suffocated noise in his throat. "Am I heavy?" 

"No. A little," Axel says, but reinforces the arm around his shoulders. He didn't even notice, his body is made of jelly and could yield and adapt to anything, at the moment.

After a minute’s canon of heavy breaths, Maxence rolls off him, sprawling with arms and legs in every direction. He lies still with eyes closed, completely knocked for six. “Oh, man.” 

A drop of sweat rolls down from Axel's forehead to the corner of his eye, and he blinks and rubs it against the salty sting. “Yea."

Maxence huffs a quiet laughter.

"That's what a year of subliminal foreplay does to you,” Axel says.

Maxence turns and looks at him. "That's what you do to me. We did it before, remember?"

Axel squints at him. "I keep forgetting that." 

With a quick look at his hand, Maxence shoves it against the side of Axel's face and up into his hair, spreading something that feels suspiciously like runny warmth that has turned runny cold. 

"No, what the fuck is that," Axel shouts and grabs at his wrist. Maxence giggles and rolls into him, rubbing his hand thoroughly through his hair. 

"It's hair gel," he says and laughs at Axel as he reaches for the sheets, vehemently wiping his head with it. 

"Crétin," he mumbles, but can't stop himself from laughing too. "I don't use hair gel." He shoves the sheets to the side and gets up on his elbows. 

"Want a beer?" Maxence says, pushing himself down to the foot of the bed, getting up.

"Yea, sure," Axel mumbles, feeling around with his arm bent in an uncomfortable angle behind his back. He fishes out Maxence's flattened snapback from under himself and leans back against the bedpost.

Maxence turns around with a beer in each hand, stopping halfway back into the bed. "My hat! If you didn’t like it you could've just said,” he chuckles and crawls back alongside Axel, and plops down beside him again. 

“I’m sorry,” he says sincerely. “I don’t remember putting it there, though.” 

Maxence snickers and takes it from his hand, flinging it to the floor. “A sacrifice for a greater purpose,” he says. 

“Amen.” Axel’s hand acts on its own accord, when he runs the back of his fingers along Maxence’s bare upper arm. Maxence bends and puts a discreet kiss on his knuckles; the soft, apologetic kind that offers to hurriedly disappear if the invitation to touch wasn’t sincerely meant. Axel doesn’t need any apologies, though; his lips are welcome. Maybe too welcome, he thinks as Maxence looks up at him and he’s reminded of the psychological fracas that has been inflicted on him, continuously over the past year and a half, by that face. He opens his beer, trying to reroute his attention to the world outside of the hotel room window. It’s dark by now, purple and green neon lights penetrate the semi-transparent curtains.

“What?” asks Maxence.

“Nothing. Laisse tomber,” Axel says when he insists. 

“No.” 

It hadn’t taken much for his determination to not get involved in this again to crack. Less than thirty-six hours into sharing a private space with him and here he is, with Maxence’s artisanal hair gel in his bangs. “Talk to me. It’s weird when you don’t talk,” Maxence mutters and sips his beer. 

Axel groans. “I don’t know. Don’t mind me. I’m -” he starts, but interrupts himself and looks at Maxence, soaking up those androgynous streaks in his face that make him feel all funny inside.

“You’re… in seventh heaven?” he offers.

Axel smiles at that but otherwise feels like he’s about to bite his own tail. “Confused,” he admits.

Maxence puts his beer down and stares at him intently. “You’re confused?”

“Si.” Axel shuffles about a little in the sheets until he finds a comfortable position. 

Maxence reclines on an elbow, still looking at him like he’s trying to penetrate and decode every single thought in his head. Axel nearly hisses for him to stop. "Coulda' sworn you weren't confused a couple of minutes ago."

"No. Not about that,” Axel says. “Although, I swear to god I'd never have imagined this …," he says with a vague gesture to the both of them and the general situation in the bed. "Before everything." He shakes his head and snickers. "But here we are."

"Here we are," Maxence agrees.

"Again.”

“Undeniably.” Maxence still looks a bit puzzled, like Axel gave him a big picture to look at through a tiny monocular and now he’s nervous about what he’ll find, sweeping it across the canvas. 

“That's not really what I meant, though,” Axel tries again. 

Maxence lays down and watches him silently from his pillow. "What, then?"

Axel sighs, rolls over and falls down flat on his stomach with his chin against the mattress. "Aren't you?" he asks, and turns to him.

"Am I not _what_?"

"A little young to be an avenger,” Axel says, automatically trying to steer away when he realizes what he’s about to say; shocked to find himself on the brink of making a confession he never planned on making. The confession of confusion, or if it’s the other way around. 

"I don't get it." 

"It's a Marvel-… never mind."

"So, tell me?" Maxence says and nudges him softly.

Axel’s face feels clammy and warm, it must be thirty degrees in there, and he rubs it against the pillow a few times. "Don't you ever feel a bit… confused."

"Uh-uh, it's not my turn.” Maxence pokes a finger into his side. “Finish what you started." 

Axel contemplates brushing it all off, stopping before it’s too late, but senses that it would be nearly an impossible task to get Maxence to drop it now. "You may wish you'd never said that,” he warns quietly.

"Try me."

"Do you ever ask yourself…" He falls quiet again, until Maxence giggles into his beer bottle. 

"Does Axel have a speech impediment? Yes, often." 

Axel shoves him lightly and carries on. "In the future, or you know- more like, in another time and place-"

"Will human intelligence be outperformed by the artificial?" Maxence interrupts, entertained by his own joke.

"Ugh," Axel groans and turns in the other direction, giving Maxence his back. 

"I'm sorry, sorry!” Maxence pulls at him with a strong hand to his shoulder, making him roll over on his back again after some initial resistance. “I just wanted to make you laugh," he says, running a tentative hand over his chest. 

Axel stays quiet, not because he minds Maxence’s idiot sense of humor, but because he is right next to and above him, in an angle that begs to be closed by a kiss. 

His hand comes up, into Axel's hair and when he runs his fingers carefully through it this time, down to the nape of his neck, the implications are so clear compared to this morning. "Do I ever ask myself," he helps.

Axel averts his eyes but Maxence is so close and he is right; he should finish what he started. "In another… time and place," is as far as he gets. He struggles, because the next part is so naked that it burns.

Maxence suddenly drops down to him, and strokes his forehead against his shoulder with a quiet sigh. "Yea. I do." 

Axel looks up at the ceiling, listening to the silence. One of them should say something, not just leave this half-spoken confession hanging in the air. But he has said so much already. Maxence comes up from Axel’s shoulder, skims his hand gently along his face and closes the gap between them with a little push of his fingers under his chin. The insecure confession manifests itself as a truth, sealed by that kiss. Axel kisses him again and again, equal parts relieved and uncomfortable with the disclosure. Maybe a little more relieved than uncomfortable, and after a while most of all horny, because kissing Maxence is like a long, slow fuck up against a wall without ever getting tired, just crazy. 

He sighs when they break apart. If it wasn't already, it will sure as hell be difficult to brush whatever-this-is off as something completely casual, now. 

Maxence lingers by his face, affected by the moment’s heart and candor. "Been asking myself that many times, to be honest," he mutters.

"I don't know what to do about it."

Maxence shimmies down some and puts his chin on top of his hand on Axel’s chest. He looks thoughtful, but calm and happy. A smirk plays at Axel’s lips before he can stop it. 

"Me neither," Maxence says. Then he falls silent and disappears in thoughts, but there’s no rush or stress anymore. “If things had been different. I don’t know,- But it's not like that, in my life, right now,” he explains in incomplete sentences.

Axel shakes his head. “No. Don't… think about that. I meant in an alternate reality.”

“In an alternate reality…” He sketches lightly with his finger-tips where Axel’s t-shirt rides up along his stomach, slowly circling his birthmarks and following the lines of his muscles in an arbitrary pattern. “Maybe you'd come back with me to Paris after this, instead,” he continues after some silence.

“No way. Fuck Paris,” Axel scoffs. “We would go to Bali.”

“I don’t know. That bungalow place looked shady. Weird beds.”

“Didn’t book that one.” Axel bends his neck and empties the beer. Laying down again, he puts an arm around Maxence, briefly reflecting on the width of his shoulders. “Better than your gross bed. I bet that bed has an STI,” he says, shielding himself with an arm when Maxence comes after him. “Bet it’s pregnant, too.”

“Shut up,” he groans and pushes at Axel’s head, making him burst into laughter. “I was wrong, you’re not Aristotle.” Maxence lays down again, moving in towards Axel’s body. "In this reality, can I sleep in this bed? With you."

His question, so simple and unassuming, renders Axel speechless for a short moment. “Yea, you can,” he says and pulls him closer.


End file.
